Pitt, swathed as an invalid, opposed the motion in a long speech. He alleged his respect for the King as the ground of his opposition. For this address would be advice to the King in his Electoral capacity which we had no claim to offer, and which, moreover, might involve his Electorate in a peril equal to our own. He seems to have argued against any fear of invasion, on the ground that in the Dutch war, with a suspected King, we had coped with Holland and France; that in 1690, when the French had beaten our fleet at Beachy Head and had an army actually in Ireland, we had surmounted that danger; and that de Witt, the greatest man since the men of Plutarch, had proposed an invasion to d'Estrades, who had treated it as a chimerical suggestion. In any case the natural force of the nation was sufficient to repel any attack of the enemy. That state alone is a sovereign state 'qui suis stat viribus, non alieno pendet arbitrio,' which subsists by its own strength, not by the courtesy of its neighbours:[319] words which may have inspired Lord Lyndhurst, a century afterwards, with his famous phrase with regard to a State existing on sufferance. He would vote, Pitt proceeded, for raising any numbers of British troops. The late war had formed many great officers, and he would not interpose foreigners to hinder their promotion; nor would he force this vote on the King when he might send for his troops without.[320] The motion was agreed to by 259 to 92. Bubb comically commented on the readiness of the King, who had then amassed, it was believed, an immense treasure in Hanover, to make the nation pay for this defence of himself, by declaring that 'His Majesty would not for the world lend himself a farthing.' Not less humorous is the story preserved by Horace Walpole that the night the Hanoverian troops were voted, he summoned his German cook and ordered himself an exceptionally good supper. 'Get me all de varieties,' said the homely monarch, 'I don't mind expense.' A lampoon in the form of an anecdote, it is to be supposed. [Sidenote: March 30, 1756.]